Talential
Investor deck · Pre-seed 2026
Investor deck · Pre-seed 2026

Every interview
is a blind date.

We're building the platform that ends it, for SMEs and GenZ across ASEAN and beyond.

CONFIDENTIAL · NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION talential.net
A
The problem
Hiring was broken before AI.
AI made it worse.
01
Before AI: already broken
The best interviewee got the job. Not the best worker.
Gut feel, CVs, Facebook posts. No signal. No verification. Hiring was a beauty contest dressed up as a process.
02
With AI screeners: it got worse
Now it's a keyword game.
AI filters reward candidates who know how to game the system. The real signal is gone. The blind date got blinder.
03
The result: unchanged
60% of hires fail on attitude.
Not skills. Not experience. The things no resume has ever captured and no AI has ever screened for.
98% of businesses in ASEAN are SMEs. They hire from Facebook. No ATS. No HR department. No tool that was ever built for them.
98%
of ASEAN businesses
are SMEs
Why the blind date
Three structural failures
no one has fixed.
01
The resume is self-claimed.
Every selection starts with a document written by the candidate, unverified by anyone. No external truth signal exists in the process.
02
There is no centralized ledger.
No platform captures what happened at the interview or during probation. Every insight vanishes. The next hire starts from zero. Permanently.
03
The system wasn't built for GenZ.
Hiring was designed for linear careers. GenZ works gig, part-time, and full-time by 20. They have no "career history". The process doesn't recognize them.
B
The solution
We rebuilt hiring.
From the ground up.
🔗
One platform
Talential replaces the entire hiring stack for SMEs.
No ATS. No recruiter. No AI black box. Talent owns their record. Employers hire on real, verified signal. Not what someone wrote about themselves on a Sunday afternoon. The whole loop, rebuilt.
🧠
One framework
AAC: the signal that actually predicts performance.
Attitude Aptitude Communication
Captured peer-to-peer. Validated by people who actually worked with the talent. Surfaced before the first interview. Not discovered during probation when it's already too late.
🎯
One target
Built for SMEs and GenZ. Both underserved.
SMEs are 98% of ASEAN businesses and have no real hiring tool. GenZ is the incoming workforce and fits no existing process. Talential is the first platform built for both sides, from scratch.
Product
The platform in action.
Apply screen Business screen Timeline screen
C
Where we are
Product live.
Proof building.
10 → 100
paying businesses now, growing to 100 by July 2026. All active. All hiring through Talential today.
Bình Thạnh Thảo Điền District 1 F&B Hospitality
3 universities student cohorts HCMC
Product: in production
Onboarding businesses and universities now. The core loop is live.
AAC: in testing
Testing our framework to surface what makes entry-level talent unique. No experience, no CV. Their personality, communication style, and management fit is the only signal. This is the hardest part to solve first.
Product-market fit: in validation
Brands are testing until October. PMF confirmed when retention, repeat hire, and talent completion all hold.
D
How we do it
Three principles.
Built into every layer.
🪟
Transparency
No-show tracking. Talent experience ratings. Salary validation. Like Glassdoor, but for frontliners and the SMEs who hire them.
⚖️
Accountability
No-shows are registered. Businesses must give feedback to every applicant. No ghosting. Better behavior on both sides raises platform quality and reduces churn.
🏆
Reputation
Showed up to an interview: you earn it. Passed probation: you own it. Collected badges: you keep them forever. Businesses earn reputation too: talent rates management style and work environment.
AAC assessment
E
Market size
$700 billion.
All of it runs on self-claimed data.
The entire global hiring industry. White collar, blue collar, gig, frontliner, manager. All of it built on CVs written by candidates about themselves. No verification. No behavior signal. Just keywords. That is the market we are replacing.
Total market
Global
White collar Blue collar Gig SME + Enterprise Every geography
$700B
Global hiring market
V2 · 2027
ASEAN
Thailand · Indonesia Philippines · Singapore 600M+ workforce 98% SME across markets LatAm · MENA · Africa — same structure
$45B
ASEAN hiring market
V1 · Active now
Vietnam · HCMC
400K+ SMEs 500K+ GenZ students Entry to management 96% SME economy Facebook = #1 hiring channel
$180M
Talential SAM · HCMC · all roles
We start in HCMC: the most SME-dense, GenZ-heavy, hiring-broken city in Southeast Asia. The playbook that works here works in Bangkok, Jakarta, Lagos, and Bogota.
F
Competitive positioning
They chased the 2%.
We're building for the other 98.
What the market needs LinkedIn
JobStreet		 AI screeners Gig platforms Talential
AAC signal before interview✕✕✕✓
Peer-validated competencies✕✕✕✓
Portable career record (talent owns it)~✕✕✓
Built for SMEs: zero ATS needed✕✕✕✓
Gig + part-time + full-time in one✕✕~✓
Designed for GenZ + frontliner ASEAN✕✕~✓
Centralized reputation ledger✕✕✕✓
Almost all the market still runs on resumes and job boards. Now everyone is piling into AI screeners.
Talential is a trust network. A different product, a different moat.
98%
of businesses are SMEs
with no HR tech serving them
Red ocean (saturated)
Blue ocean (clear space)
Talential
Market segment → SME / physical economy Trust signal → peer-validated Corporate Mid-market SME / gig Keyword AI score Peer trust Red ocean Blue ocean JobStreet VNWorks Indeed Timviec WorkVN LinkedIn TopCV Glints GrabJobs JobHopin uncontested talential SME · peer trust

Every existing player competes in the corporate / keyword quadrant. The SME + peer-trust space has no incumbent.

G
The team
Operators.
Not theorists.
Gwen Cheylan
Gwen Cheylan
CEO & Founder
15+ years building digital platforms in fintech, e-commerce, hospitality and real estate across Vietnam and Thailand. Former President of La French Tech Vietnam. A decade researching ASEAN hiring systems.
Psychology · Platform building · ASEAN
LinkedIn →
Andrew Schwabe
Andrew Schwabe
Co-founder · AI Researcher & Architect
Founded Formotiv, a behavioral biometrics AI platform. Co-founder of Saigon AI. 8× founder, 15+ years in AI and behavioral data.
AI · Behavioral data · Architecture
LinkedIn →
Rebecca Joy
Rebecca Joy
CFO · Data Science
30 years across pharma, high-tech, and data science. CEO of Saigon AI. UC Berkeley-trained. Brings financial rigor and data infrastructure expertise to Talential's operations and modelling.
Finance · Data science · Operations
LinkedIn →
Nathanael Ohana
Nathanael Ohana
AI Operations
Design project management background. 7+ years coordinating large-scale projects across ASEAN and Europe. Building Talential's AI-driven operational workflows and product processes.
Operations · Design · AI workflows
LinkedIn →
+ 4 additional: community, brand design, marketing, administration
H
Revenue model
Businesses pay.
Talent is always free.
Base Realistic 3 agents · 5% churn · 2 listings avg
Bull Word-of-mouth 1.8× acquisition · peer referral
Wildfire Viral loop 3× speed · GenZ flywheel
Acquisition
Speed mult1.0×
Listings / biz / mo2.0
Gig uptake %15%
Mid listings %25%
Management %5%
Churn
Early M1–M65%
Mature M7–M123%
Full model in data room.
M12 EBITDA
—
Break-even
—
Cash to B/E
—
Businesses M12
—
Monthly Revenue
■ Listings■ Gig
Monthly EBITDA
■ Profit■ Burn
Cash in hand
Bank balance · $500K start · +$500K at M5
I
$1M
Pre-seed ask
HCMC launch · 12–14 months runway
40%
Product & Platform · $400K
Tech, development, product, servers, AI, internal infrastructure
30%
Marketing · $300K
Content creation, social media, The Space, job fairs, KOL, universities
25%
Team · $250K
12 to 15 people
5%
Buffer · $50K
Legal, compliance, operations
Instrument
SAFE note
Post-money valuation
$6M
Runway
12–14 months · HCMC
talential.net
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